


All the Things in Heaven and Earth

by chaoticTransmissions



Category: Hamlet - All Media Types, Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Angst, Boys In Love, F/M, Football Metaphors, Gay Male Character, Homophobia, Idk i just wanted a gay Hamlet AU, M/M, Multi, Murder, Overdose, Suicide Attempt, This is really sad but also kinda hopeful?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 11:23:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16575509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticTransmissions/pseuds/chaoticTransmissions
Summary: Horatio, Ophelia, and Laertes attempt to come to terms with the events of Hamlet's death.(Modern high school AU, loosely based on the events of the play)





	All the Things in Heaven and Earth

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta'd or proofread because I'm lazy. If there are typos, that's why lol. Don't be afraid to drag me for it if you find some.

**Horatio.**

It was in this locker room where we first kissed. It was late, and the rest of the team had gone home for the night. The two of us hung back, the memory of steam pooling around our legs as we debated the last play of the game. 

“Marcellus should have passed the ball.” You argued, for what must have been the third time in as many minutes. There was heat in your tone, but your eyes were laughing. My chest felt like it was full of hot air. I told myself it was the humidity from the showers. 

“Just because you’re Captain doesn’t mean you’re always right, Ham.” I joked, chucking an abandoned towel at your head. You laughed and lunged for me. I dodged away from you, feet nearly slipping on the damp tile floor. “What’s the matter, your highness? Can’t take a joke?”

You landed a punch on my shoulder that was hard enough to sting, and I got you in the stomach a second later. Both of us sat down on the bench, panting. My body still ached from a brutal tackle in the first half, and I could see your shoulders slump from exhaustion. Neither of us was up for a fight then, not even a friendly one. 

“I wish you’d stop calling me that.” You muttered, dragging a hand through your still damp hair.

“What, Ham? I agree, it’s a terrible nickname. Always makes me hungry.”

“No, asshole. Your Highness. Just because my mother and step-douche are rich doesn’t mean I think I’m better than anyone,” you said. I could see I’d hit a nerve, and the pressure in my chest tightened. I’d been joking when I called you that, but in a way I meant it. Not because of your parents, but because of who you were. 

You were so incredible, so larger than life. Like a prince, or something. Like a king. 

I couldn’t even begin to say something like that out loud, so instead I made a joke. “I know. You just think you’re better than everyone because your head is the size of Texas.” You smiled and some of the tension between us faded. There’s a reason why we made you captain of the football team, and it’s not just because you were the best player.

You were the most charismatic person I’ve ever met. When you smiled, it was like nothing else mattered. You’d flash those pearly whites and everyone would trust you: your word, the play you were about to call, anything. Just like that.

My hand was on the back of your neck before I could stop myself. There was no time to feel shame or fear or anything but _want_. “Marcellus should have passed the ball.” You whisper, your eyes trained on my lips. 

“Yeah right.” Is all I say, and then we were kissing. 

It only happened a few more times, and we never talked about it. My father would kill me, and you had your future in politics to worry about. Still, those few times are some of the best of my life. I think you would have been with me for real if I’d wanted. I was the one who was afraid of what people would think.

At your funeral, I don’t cry. I don’t have any tears left. I spent them all when you died in my arms. I spent them the next morning, dry heaving in my bathroom as I remembered the moment the knife entered your stomach and took you away from me. 

I can’t forget any of that night. It’s like it’s branded into my mind. Walking home from the diner, laughing about our terrible grades on the last calc test. I remember our hands brushing in the shadows between the streetlights. I was imagining a future where we could hold hands in the light, too. 

Then it all went to hell. 

At your funeral reception, I found Laertes. I punched him so hard that I broke his nose. It took Bernardo and Francisco, and some uncle of your yours to hold me back. I don’t know where Laertes got the nerve to show up to your funeral. I wanted to kill him. 

Laertes snarled at me, blood running down his chin and staining his teeth like something out of a horror movie. I had to apologize to your mom later for getting blood all over the living room carpet. 

I expected Laertes to lunge at me, and your stepdad made a move to grab him, just in case he did. But he didn’t. He just sat down on the carpet and started to cry. It would have been easier if he just punched me back. I wish he’d just punched me back. 

I left the funeral and drove to the high school. 

I didn’t know where I was going until I ended up in the locker room. You were right about that play with Marcellus.

He should have given up the ball.

 

**Ophelia.**

When I get bored in the hospital, I look for faces on the ceiling tiles. I am pretty much always bored. 

We used to play that game a lot when we were kids, remember? We would compete to see who could find the most images in the world around us. Clouds, floor tiles, abstract paintings. We played a lot of games like that, just the two of us.

Maybe that’s why I hated high school so much. Because when you joined the football team, you instantly became popular. You were named captain sophomore year and it seemed like everyone wanted to be your friend. It wasn’t just you and me anymore. It was you, me, and everyone else. 

What made it worse was that I was in love with you. 

When you asked me to be your girlfriend at homecoming, it was the most amazing feeling. Better than my first car and my SAT score all rolled into one. I could have gotten accepted into UCLA that very minute and I wouldn't have even cared. That’s how crazy I was about you. 

What made it worse was that you weren’t in love with me. 

It took me a year of dating you before I realized you were gay. It’s stupid really, I should have figured it out a long time ago. I suppose I just didn’t want to know. Even after I started suspecting, I wouldn’t admit it to myself. I wouldn’t have cared if you were just my friend. Who you love is who you love. Except for when you were supposed to love me. 

When you started seeing Horatio in secret, I knew. Of course I did. It was one of the darkest periods of my life. Combined with the stress of grades and college applications, it kind of drove me off the deep end.

Laertes had some pills left over from his knee surgery the year before. They weren’t painkillers; they were supposed to help him relax. I started taking two a day junior year. When they ran out, I got more from a friend who knew a guy. I think Laertes suspected, even asked me one time if I took his meds, but I lied to him and he believed it. 

I should have just broken up with you. You could never love me like I loved you, and our relationship was clearly going nowhere. But I never did. I can’t tell you why, except that my heart still fluttered every time you looked at me. Even if none of it was real. 

When you and your stepdad got into fights, some dark, selfish part of me would be glad. Because you would come to me first. Not Horatio or anyone else. You would come to me and I would hold you in my arms and tell you everything was going to be alright. 

“It won’t. You can’t say that, you can’t--” You cried one night, lunging away from me. I screamed as you rounded on the wall and began to punch it, over and over again. You looked crazy, and for a second I was afraid you were. 

“Stop, Hamlet, fuck!” I yelled, wrapping my arms around your waist until you were forced to give in. You collapsed to the ground and sobbed into my stomach. I cradled your bloody hands between my own and loved you so much I thought it would swallow me. 

“I hate him.” You told me. 

“I know.” I soothed. You apologized about the dent in the wall later, when your eyes aren't red anymore. 

Then you went and got yourself killed, and I went to pieces. 

After I got home from the ER where you died, I traced the dent in my basement wall and cry myself to sleep. After your funeral, I started taking even more pills. I couldn’t even look at my brother. I was a mess. 

What made it worse was that I kept dialing your number into my phone before I could stop myself. Like you’d be on the other line to answer. 

I still don’t understand how a person can be here one day, then gone the next. I don’t understand how a senseless act of violence took you from me, from everyone who loved you. I can’t get the image of your blood pooling on the cement out of my head. I don’t know how to stop smelling your shampoo. 

The week after your funeral I woke up and didn’t want to live anymore. I went outside and stood in the garden my mother had poured so many years of love and care into. She’d once yelled at us for trampling her petunias and we’d apologized, grim-faced as we tracked mud into the kitchen. 

It was a Tuesday, and I was staying home from school with a ‘headache’. I had a lot of headaches after you died. I was alone in the house. I went inside. There was a pill bottle hidden under the mattress in my bedroom. I took it out and stared at it for a long time. Then I ran a bath.

When the tub was full, I got in, still wearing my pajamas. The damp fabric clung to my skin, the slightly too hot water making my eyes water. I took out a handful of p*lls and stared down at them. 

It was then I told myself to swallow them. It was then I remembered the way your eyes glowed when you laughed and the smell of your cologne. It was then I remembered the sound of your fists striking plaster, and the way your lips twitched when you looked at Horatio. Like you were always on the edge of a smile you didn’t dare show.

I don’t care if you loved Horatio more than me. I don’t care if you loved me at all. As long as I could pretend, as long as I could live the fantasy of the two of us I’d been holding onto since fourth grade. And then you died and everything fell apart. I hated you, and Laertes, and Horatio in equal measure. I even hated myself. 

What made it worse was that it wouldn’t bring you back. 

There was this one memory that got stuck in my head. It was of my thirteenth birthday party. Your mom made you wear a suit, even though you hated it. You kept switching between pushing your sleeves up and pulling your collar down. After dinner and cake, the two of us sat on the back porch and watched the sun go down. The party was still going on inside, but I wanted to be alone with you. 

I remember my heart beating furiously in my chest, and feeling almost sick with anticipation. I thought for sure that you’d kiss me. I’d been waiting for it all night. We were sitting so close, I could feel the heat of your leg against mine. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I turned to you. But you weren’t looking at me, Hamlet. You were looking at the stars. 

What made it worse was that I wanted to be those stars. I wanted to be your whole damned galaxy. I deserved to be more than just a planet in your orbit. 

It was in that moment I realized I didn’t want to die, but I couldn’t let go of the pills. It was like they were glued to my hand. But I stepped out of the tub, crying as I trudged across the hall to the landline. I was dripping water all over the hardwood floors. 

Laertes answered on the second ring. “Ophelia? What’s wrong, I’m on my way to work.” I could hear the buzz of voices in the hallway behind him, a cacophony of white noise. 

“If you could go back and stop it, would you?” I asked, suddenly very, very tired. 

Laertes sighed on the other side of the phone. He sounded tired too. “Of course. I think about that all the time.” 

“Me too.” I said, my voice almost a whisper. I still had the pills balled up in one fist. “Laertes, I need you to call the police for me. I’m too afraid to do it myself.” 

Hamlet, I’m not ready to forgive anyone. Not the boy who killed you, not his friends, and not even Laertes. I’m not ready to forgive you either, for breaking my heart and your own.

But I am ready to forgive myself. I want someone to look at me like you looked at the stars. I want to love myself the way I pretended you could for so long. I want to get out of this fucking hospital. 

What makes it better is that I don’t have to pretend anymore. 

 

**Laertes.**

I don’t know what else to say, Hamlet, but that I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. 

I know you and Ophelia were pretty close, but you didn't know her like I did. No one did. I’d wanted a little sister my whole life. I begged my parents for one constantly. Every letter I wrote to Santa began and ended like this: Dear Santa, all I want for Christmas is a little sister. 

When Ophelia was born, it was the best day of my life. I sat in the waiting room with my grandma and read comic books while we waited for my mom to get out of labor. When the nurse came to get us, I walked behind her in the little suit I’d insisted on wearing. 

She was the tiniest baby I’ve ever seen. Just over five pounds. Her face was all pink and wrinkled, and she kept crying. She didn’t look like I’d expected a baby to look like, and I was suddenly nervous. What if I’d been wishing for the wrong thing the whole time?

Then Ophelia’s hand touched mine and my mom told her “that’s Laertes. That’s your big brother,” and I knew that nothing would ever be more important to me. 

So you have to understand why. Not forgive me, or even agree that what I did was justifiable. It wasn’t justifiable. And there’s nothing I can ever do to make what I did okay. But you have to try and understand why I did what I did. Please, you have to try and understand. 

I remember the day I first met you. It was Phe’s eighth birthday. They had this policy that if you invited one person in the class, you had to invite the whole class, and you were in Ophelia’s class. I’m not sure how well the two of you knew each other before this, but you spent the whole party together. 

When I was cutting the cake, I offered Ophelia the first slice. It said ‘Happy Birthday Ophelia’ in pink frosting. She asked you which one she should pick. You said the ‘h’ in Ophelia, because it could stand for Hamlet, too. It was if you knew even then that the two of you were linked. 

After that, you were always around. Every weekend the two of you were playing video games in the basement or chasing each other in the yard. I was glad that Ophelia finally had a best friend, someone else who could look over her when I couldn’t. You and my sister were so attached at the hip, it was like she had her own personal bodyguard. Then one day at dinner Ophelia accidentally called you her boyfriend, and the cat was out of the bag. 

I did the whole protective older brother thing at first. I’m sure you remember. Standing at my dad’s shoulder when he reminded you to bring her home before curfew, polishing my metaphorical shotgun. But I was never truly worried. I guess in my head, you were still just the kid I’d watched grow up. It never occurred to me that you would break Ophelia’s heart.

I didn’t hate you at the beginning. I don’t hate you now. God knows we spent enough time together at family barbeques and birthday dinners and super bowl parties. But about a year after you started dating, Ophelia started missing Sunday dinners. I rarely saw her out of her room and she barely spoke to me. 

I started getting worried because I didn’t know what was wrong with her. When some of my old meds started going missing, I brushed it off. The only person who could have taken them was Ophelia, and I refused to believe my kid sister was abusing drugs. I kept ignoring it until the pills were all gone, and then when I finally went to talk to her I couldn’t even convince myself to treat it like an intervention. I don’t think I’ve ever asked a question more neutrally in my life. 

Ophelia blew up at me anyway, saying that she’d never done a drug in her life and I was crazy for accusing her. That it must have been one of my friends when they came over to the house. Or maybe I just lost them. Didn’t I know her better than that?

You know what’s stupid, Hamlet? I knew she was lying. I could see it in her face. But I didn’t say anything else. Just apologized and let the matter drop. I told myself that I could figure out what was making her take the pills and fix the issue. I told myself that once they were gone, she couldn’t get more. 

If I’d just said something to someone sooner. My parents, the councilors at her school, even you. Maybe none of this would have happened. But there’s no use dwelling on what could have been. This is about what I did instead. 

Instead, I started doing what I’d always done for my little sister: looking for the monster under the bed, the untied shoelace, the missing sock. There had to be something I could point my finger at. A boogeyman I could vanquish. Anything to avoid acknowledging that Ophelia was no longer the tiny, helpless creature who’d held my hand in the hospital. 

You became that boogeyman after you punched a hole in our basement wall. I still don’t know why you did it. If you and Ophelia were in a fight, or if something was going on at home. You never said anything to me, but I gathered from Ophelia that things weren’t great. Either way, it wasn’t a sane thing to do. 

When our dad asked about the hole in the wall afterward, Ophelia said she’d been messing around with one of the pool sticks and did it on accident. She got grounded that weekend for being careless but never said a word about what really happened. I believed the story myself until I saw the cuts on your knuckles the next day and put the pieces together.

When I did, I thought… I don’t know what I thought. Not that you would ever hit Ophelia. I never thought that for a second. But that you were unstable and that you were going to drag her into it. And you did. 

Ophelia got worse over the next two years. The two of you were still dating, still together all the time. But it seemed like something out of a movie. Perfect, and plastic, and shallow. Ophelia spent more and more time in her room. I would find her sitting outside at night staring up at the sky. She couldn’t even hear me calling her name until I touched her, and sometimes when she looked at me it was like I wasn’t even there. 

Still, I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone that I thought she was taking pills. Instead, I noticed that the more time you spent with her, the more depressed she got. I started hearing rumors around school that you were into guys, but I dismissed it. 

Then one day I saw you and Horatio kissing in the parking lot of a coffee shop. I was driving by at the time and when I saw that it was you, really you, I was livid. I almost pulled over and right then and there to give you a piece of my mind. Then I thought about how broken hearted Ophelia would be to find out that you’d cheated on her. 

She was already going through so much. I was afraid finding out would break her. So I swallowed my rage and kept driving. I waited a day to think. That day became several days. I was trapped in this purgatory of anger and fear and indecision. 

So when Fortinbras waltzed into that bar that night, I was at the end of my rope. I wasn’t thinking. I should have been thinking. I was blitzed, trying to forget about the fact that I was going to have to break my little sister’s heart, and Fortinbras comes right up and sits next to me. 

Fortinbras has always been an asshole. He’s one of those bible thumpers who doesn’t really know what the bible means. He protested at the local pride event a few years ago, and he’d rather spit in your face than shake your hand if he thought you were anything other than straight. 

I’ve never liked him. We knew each other from school, but we didn’t hang out because I didn’t agree with his views. I was raised Protestant, so I know my gospel better than most, and I don’t care about what some tiny passage in the bible says. God doesn’t give a shit about if you’re gay. _I_ don’t give a shit about if you’re gay.

I swear to you Hamlet, it wasn’t ever about that. I have friends who are gay. I keep the rainbow ribbon my college’s gay-straight alliance group gave out a few years ago on my backpack. I was just drunk, and upset about you cheating no Ophelia and _I didn't think_. 

I started rambling on about this asshole who cheated on my sister with a guy. How he hadn’t had the decency to just tell her he was gay. He asked me for your name, and I gave it to him. 

Maybe some dark part of me thought Fortinbras might fan the rumors about you large enough that Ophelia would hear about them. Then she’d break up with you, and she wouldn’t have to know that you’d cheated. Or that I’d known and not told her. 

But I never thought Fortinbras would go looking for you. I never thought you’d be with Horatio at the time. I never thought you’d antagonize him enough to make him stab you with a switchblade. 

I didn’t find out you were dead until the next afternoon when I woke up to a dozen texts and missed calls. I was still hungover from the night before. I barely remembered what happened. Ophelia was in the emergency room with your parents waiting to receive the news that you’d bled to death, and I was passed out on my apartment couch. 

My dad had been texting me to get to the hospital all night. When I didn’t respond, he switched to updating me about your health. The last text read: “Hamlet just passed away. I’m so sorry. Please call me when you get this. Your sister is grieving, and she needs her family right now.”

I only found out the next day that Fortinbras was responsible when I saw they’d arrested him on the news the next day. I threw up three times in an hour after seeing his mugshot in HD. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if it was my fault, and if I should go to the police.

The issue was decided for me. Fortinbras told them about meeting me in the bar. Then they came to my apartment to question me. I’ll never forget the look on Ophelia’s face when she found out that I’d been the one to out you to Fortinbras. That was worse than any sentence the cops could give me. 

I had a preliminary trial last week. The DA filed charges of accessory to manslaughter against me. The judge dismissed the case on the grounds that my actions didn’t meet the legal bar for the crime. 

I should be relieved that I’m not going to jail, but all I feel is numb. Maybe if I had gone to jail, all this guilt would stop eating me up inside. I could feel like I paid penance or did my time. Instead, I wander through life like a ghost and wait for the other shoe to drop. 

Or maybe the other shoe was Ophelia. 

When she called me on the phone to tell me she’d tried to overdose, I’d never been so terrified. They took her to the psych ward of a hospital and I held her hands for four days straight while she was on suicide watch because I was too scared to let go. She didn’t talk to me that whole time. She still barely does. 

I like to think you were watching over Ophelia for me, just like you did when you two were kids. That you’re still out there somewhere. I like to think that you’re the one who stopped her from overdosing long enough for me to get to her. Because even though you hurt her, you loved her too. 

I still blame you for the pain Ophelia suffered, for the broken pieces of her heart. But I blame myself too, for what happened to both of you. I’m so sorry. All I can do is keep saying it and hoping that somehow it will reach you. 

I like to think that you’re up there, watching over all the things in heaven and earth, and dreaming of so much more than we could ever imagine.


End file.
